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I like a good mind fuck as much as anyone, but hey, Mr. Movie, do not roll over and light a cigarette before you’ve done your job. Jack Starks is a Gulf War vet wrongly convicted of murder (or is he?) by reason of insanity — his brains got scrambled by a bullet in Iraq … more…
BEST DIRECTOR Lars von Trier, Dogville Ever a risktaker, Lars von Trier took one of the biggest risks onscreen in 2004 with a determinedly uncinematic film that was also unabashedly political — a breathtaking and refreshingly daring combination in an era of play-it-safe “entertainment.” Setting his cast and his scene on a bare, black-box stage, … more…
These reviews have moved — sorry for the inconvenience. Because of Winn-Dixie The Big Black Comedy Show Bigger Than the Sky Downfall Hunter: The Complete First Season Ice Princess The Jacket Murder One: The Complete First Season Oliver’s Travels Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior Steamboy The Tracker
BEST ACTOR Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda It’s a role that, in the hands of even another very competent actor, could have descended into pathos and sentimentality, but Cheadle’s performance goes way beyond mere competence: As an Oskar Schindler-type figure in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, he approaches incomprehensible horrors in a way that makes us intimate partners … more…
There’s a moment, toward the end of *Kinsey,* when the sex researcher — by this point half-renowned, half-reviled — is giving a lecture about the disconnect between public morality in the United States and the private behavior that all the preaching and haranguing in the world isn’t going to change. (C’mon: Who *doesn’t* love orgasms? Who *isn’t* getting nowhere near enough of them?) While Kinsey rants passionately, a middle-aged couple stand up and stalk out, looking like they’ve smelled something bad.
If you’ve ever dreamed of the many ways in which, say, rugged tough guy Tommy Lee Jones could be emasculated, your dream has come true. Confrontation with yards of lacy, sexy lingerie hanging in the shower? Check. Confusion in the ‘feminine products’ aisle of the supermarket? Oh, you know it.
It’s kindness, at first, that leads you to suspect that someone is pulling our collective leg with *Diary of a Mad Black Woman,* because surely anything this jaw-droppingly awful must be a joke. Surely this is not being proffered with any genuine intention of it being seen as, well, an actual *movie,* with a plot and characters and scenes that connect in some reasonably logical sense. This *must* be a *MAD TV* sketch that went horribly wrong and escaped into the wild where it turned feral. Right?
Berlin has been reduced to rubble, the Russians are overrunning the city, 10-year-old kids are fighting alongside soldiers in the streets, and a once-proud citizenry has been completely demoralized. The reaction from the nation’s leadership: “The German people chose their fate,” Joseph Goebbels says with a shrug — after all, they elected the man who … more…
It is suggested in *A Company of Soldiers* that those Americans who protest the invasion and occupation of Iraq are simply too afraid to come out and fight — if they have the energy to organize marches and demonstrations, they should sign up for the *real* battle. The cognitive dissonance required to come up with such a stubbornly diametric take on protest is downright stunning… until you consider that the man who proffers this bizarre idea is one of the grunts actually doing the fighting.
When I tell you guys that it’s my job to watch bad movies so you don’t have to — though, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve actually ever put it that way before, but it’s true — it’s movies like *Son of the Mask* that I’m talking about. My suffering will have been in vain if you succumb to the slick marketing — like the TV ads that try to make ‘Jamie Kennedy’ sound like ‘Jim Carrey’ — or to nostalgia for the 1994 film (which I think is astoundingly mediocre but is a work of genius compared to this one) and end up in a movie theater where *Son of the Mask* is showing. And *your* suffering at that point will certainly be in vain.
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